After only 6 months, iPhone takes 6th place in 2007 US sales

Considering the high value (and correspondingly high price), Apple held its …

We're thinking it's about time we try to get ahold of Steve Ballmer for a followup interview on the iPhone. For having "no chance" of gaining significant market share, Apple's phone has already garnered 28 percent of the US smartphone market, and it has even overtaken nearly every other device in terms of mobile browser market share. Now, a new NPD Group study says that the iPhone snagged a respectable place among all US mobile phone sales—not just smartphones—in 2007.

In an NPD Group report recounted by Electronista, about 146 million mobile phones were sold in the US last year. Considering that 3.7 million of those were iPhones, that gives Apple an initially-paltry share of 2.5 percent of the US market for 2007. When stacked against the shares of other market leaders like Motorola's 32 percent and Samsung's 17 percent, however, Apple ranks at sixth place in the US. Not bad for a phone that was only on the market for half the year.

The NPD Group also issued a few other statistics, such as the iPhone taking fifth place place in the final quarter of 2007 (12 percent of all sales during that time). Interestingly, however, the NPD Group downplayed the importance of media playback for mobile phones in 2008. Instead, the group sees all manufacturers pushing for 3G high-speed access, larger screens, and a "break away from traditional directional pad navigation." Considering that the iPhone already has two out of those three "predictions," it shouldn't be hard for Apple to complete that gadget trinity this year.

NPD did not respond to our request for a copy of the report by publication time.